A&E: 'In Pursuit of Wildlife' exhibit at ISU features works by Reece, Darling

Exhibit of the conservation pioneers' art will be on display for four months at the Brunnier Art Museum in Ames.

Aug. 23, 2013

Iowa State University commissioned Des Moines artists Maynard Reece to create a new painting to honor his and Jay 'Ding' Darling's contributions to the Federal Duck Stamp program. / ISU Museums/Special to the Register

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Jay 'Ding' Darling's 1951 etching '15 Minutes After Sundown' is one of his wildlife-related works in the permanent collection at Iowa State University Museums. ISU Museums/Special to the Register / ISU Museums/Special to the Register

From his drawing table at the Des Moines Register, editorial cartoonist Jay 'Ding' Darling championed wildlife conservation throughout the first half of the 20th century. / Register file photo

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The local artist Maynard Reece was just 19 when he mustered the courage to show some of his nature paintings to the late Jay “Ding” Darling, the Register’s Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist.

“I was quite timid and scared, and when I met him it was even worse because he had a gruff exterior and a gruff voice,” Reece recalled awhile back. “I showed him my paintings and he said, ‘Well, I can tell you they’re nice and that won’t help you a bit. Or I can tell you what’s wrong with them. What do you want?’ ”

Reece chose honesty, and it led to a mentoring friendship that lasted for the next 23 years, until Darling’s death in 1962. More than a half-century later their works hang together in a new show at Iowa State. “In Pursuit of Wildlife Conservation: Jay N. Darling and Maynard Reece” will open Tuesday for four months at the Brunnier Art Museum — thanks in part to ISU President Steven Leath.

“Early in my presidency at Iowa State, I visited Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds in her office at the State Capitol, and I admired the two Maynard Reece paintings she has in her office,” Leath wrote in an email. “I have to admit I was a little jealous.”

It wasn’t long afterward that Leath, a plant scientist and avid outdoorsman, met with university museums director Lynette Pohlman, who suggested the university commission the artist to paint a new work for the university. Leath agreed, and they arranged to visit Reece, now 93, in his Des Moines studio.

“It was sort of magical,” Pohlman said of the conversation, during which Leath and Reece swapped memories of childhoods spent outdoors, stomping around the woods and wetlands where they grew up. “Scientists and artists are very close. They’re very compatible. They all use the visual language to express what they’re doing.”

Leath told Reece about duck hunting “on cold, dark winter mornings, when the trees were barren and the sky was dark and heavy” — details the artist eventually translated onto the canvas.

The university already owned a mix of prints and etchings by Darling but nothing by Reece, whose new commission honors his and Darling’s paintings for the Federal Duck Stamps, which have raised money to save millions of wetland acres nationwide. Darling created the first image for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service program in 1934, and Reece won five of the annual competitions that followed — in 1948, 1951, 1959, 1969 and 1971 — more than any other artist.

“He’s the king of the Duck Stamp,” Pohlman said.

The new show includes 75 etchings by Darling, including the one for his 1934 Duck Stamp, and 30 paintings by Reece, including all five winning Duck Stamp works and the new commission.

“We need to call attention to the continual need to conserve and protect our precious natural resources, and I think that’s part of a land-grant university’s responsibility,” Leath said. “It’s going to be a fantastic exhibit.”